by Judith Tarr
He wept hard, but he did not weep long. He raised his head. Her guards, tall women in bright armor, had averted their eyes. Tears glistened on their cheeks.
He scrubbed them from his own. His eyes had burned dry. He would not weep again.
Rage swelled where grief had been, rage as white and cold and pitiless as the sun that pierced the high windows of the hall.
It thrust him to his feet. It drove him through the palace in a train of startled people, animals, even a lone brainless bird that had escaped its cage.
The rebels who had begun it all were gone. He began to order out the hunt; then paused. They were but puppets. Whether they thought they acted of themselves, or knew that they were a feint, it did not matter. He knew. He had memory of the Gate, and of the powers that sustained it.
First he must look to the care of his mother’s body. She would not be burned as priests of the Sun were; she was priestess of the goddess, and would be given to the dark and the silence. He did not know that he wished her entombed here, unless he made the whole city her tomb; and that was madder even than he was minded to be.
A place waited for her in Endros Avaryan beside the body of her lord, in the tomb of the emperors beneath the Tower of the Sun. Yet that was far to go, and revolt between, that might swell to war. And there was the matter of revenge for her death.
Sunlords are above revenge. Her voice, his memory tricking him in a dart of sunlight.
Sunlords had never needed revenge; never, until Estarion, been the playthings of hidden enemies. Sarevadin who had been taken by mages and stripped of all but the raw self, had known by whom she was taken, and why. Hers had been open war, mage against mage and no quarter given.
He was prey to poison, treason, assassins. They had taken his father, his mother, his servant. They had robbed him of youth and strove now to rob him of manhood.
No more.
“My lord.”
A priest, a mage in torque and braid, tawny head bent. Estarion stared at him, empty for the moment of speech.
“My lord, will you come?”
“To what?” Estarion asked him. “Treachery?”
The priest’s head flew up. He was not pure Asanian: that pride was a plainsman’s, and those eyes, yellow though they were, narrow above the high cheekbones. Power shimmered on him, bright with anger. “Yes, my lord, there has been treachery. The high priest of Avaryan in Endros is dying because of it. Will you deign to visit him on his deathbed?”
No, Estarion thought. There was no reason in it, no mortal sense.
The priest had no pity for him. “I would not have troubled you, sire. But he insisted.”
How odd to be despised. How rare. He was loved or he was hated. Sometimes he was feared. But scorn—that was a new thing.
“Take me,” he said.
o0o
They had laid Iburan in a room that must have been a servant’s, with a bed as narrow as a northerner’s, and no softening of silks or velvets. Braziers there were none. He did not need them. He had his priests and his priestesses, and the heat of their power.
He lay in the midst of them, burning with fever. His body could bear no touch of coverlet; his weight upon the bed was pain. The torque about his neck burned as if it had been molten, but none of them had dared to take it off.
He should have been dead long ago, but he clung to life with fierce persistence.
Estarion thrust through a wall of pain, and dropped to one knee beside the bed. The face that had been so beautiful was ravaged with poison. The body was grossly swollen, suppurating with sores. It stank.
Just so, he thought, remote and burning cold. Just so had his father been.
“They lack imagination, our enemies,” he said.
Dark eyes opened in the ruined face. They warmed at sight of Estarion. The voice was a husk of itself, but there should have been no voice at all. “Starion. Still angry with me, then?”
“No,” Estarion said. “Never again, foster-father.”
Iburan’s eyes filled with tears. They scalded as they overflowed. With infinite gentleness Estarion wiped them away. Even that cost Iburan pain.
“I took your power,” Estarion said. He had not known till he said it. The horror came after; the bleak hatred of himself. “I have killed you.”
“My own fault,” said Iburan, “for getting in the way.”
“Mine,” cried Estarion. “My fault. Oh, Avaryan! It’s I who should be dead, and not you.”
“Stop that,” said Iburan. “Time enough when we’re all dead, to squabble over the bones. Now listen to me. While you were dealing with mages—and dealing surpassingly well, too; you were a marvel to watch—I happened to notice a thing or two. It slowed me down when I should have been getting out of your way, which was foolish of me, but I learned somewhat. Watch your Olenyai, Starion. If they aren’t part of this, they know enough to damn them in any court of justice.”
Estarion did not care. Iburan was dying, Merian was dead. What did anything matter but that?
But Iburan’s intensity held him, and his hand, clasping Estarion’s wrist with a shadow of its old strength. “Listen to me, Estarion. Watch them. The one they set to spy on you—the young one with the lion-eyes—”
“He’s no spy,” Estarion snapped, forgetting to be gentle.
Iburan paid no attention. “He’ll kill you if he can. He’s been ordered to do it.”
“He loves me,” Estarion said.
Iburan sighed. His breath rattled; he coughed. “No doubt he does. He hates you, too. Watch him, Estarion. Promise me.”
The light in Iburan’s eyes was fading, his grip weakening. It was only the mages’ light, Estarion tried to tell himself, flickering as it was wont to do.
“Starion,” said Iburan, “when you sing the death-rite for her—remember—how she loved best the hymn of the morning star. Sing that for her, for me.”
“You’ll sing it yourself,” Estarion said with sudden fierceness. “You won’t die. I won’t let you.”
He called his power. It was white fire, hot gold, sun’s splendor. The priest-mages fell back, struck to fear. They remembered too well what that torrent of magery had done. Its consequence lay before them, dying powerless.
“No.”
It was simple, barely to be heard, and it had no magic in it. But it checked the calling of Estarion’s power. It held him motionless.
“Starion, don’t. I’m too far gone. And, son of my heart, much as I love you, I think it’s time I left you. I’ve guarded you, bound you, held you back till I nigh destroyed you. Better for you that I go. I’ve no fear of the dark land. She’s waiting for me there, and her lord, my lord, whom I loved.”
“You said you loved me more.”
That was unworthy, but Iburan did not say so. He smiled, a stretching of cracked and bleeding lips. “Ah, child: that’s why I leave you. The god never granted me a son of my body; and yet I never felt the lack.”
Estarion’s throat locked shut. He forced the words through it. “The god granted me a father twice over. Now he takes you from me as he took the other. Exactly—as—”
“That’s merely justice,” Iburan said. His fingers slipped from Estarion’s wrist.
Estarion caught them, cradled them. “Foster-father—”
Iburan was still smiling.
So easily, after all, he went. Between one breath and the next: he lived, and then he did not. He slipped the flesh and all its torments as lightly as a lady sheds her garment, dropped it and rose winged, leaping into the light.
So could he have done at any time since he knew that he was dying. He had waited for Estarion. And Estarion had indulged himself in trifles. In sleep. In ramping about. In being a great roaring idiot.
So let him be for yet a while. He looked down at the empty, stinking thing that had been the greatest mage and priest in this age of the world. He kissed its brow, which already had begun to cool. He smoothed the beard, still beautiful on the ravaged breast, and folded the hands
over it.
He straightened. The priests—his priests—returned his stare. Some were weeping. Some were angry. Some were both.
“I give him the Sun,” he said. “By your leave.”
“You have no need of that, Sunlord,” said the proud one.
Shaiyel, that was his name. He had not put himself forward before. In the clarity of grief, Estarion knew why. Anyone of Asanian blood in Keruvarion learned to walk softly round the emperor.
The taste in his mouth was bitter. He smiled through it. “And yet I ask your leave.”
“Then you have it,” said Shaiyel.
Estarion inclined his head. Shaiyel was not forsaking contempt for anything as simple as this, but he could grant justice where justice was due.
Estarion drew a breath. His power beat like a heart. He spread his hands above Iburan’s body. The fire tried to bleed out of them; he held it back, though it burned and blistered.
The priests began to chant. It was not the death-chant but the sunrise-hymn, the song of praise to the god at his coming.
A shiver ran down Estarion’s spine. The god was in him. Never so close before this, never so strong. It would master him; it would burn him to ash.
Then so be it.
He laid himself before the god. As you will, he thought, sang, was. All, and only, as you will.
He was the fountain and the source. He was the burning brand. He was the fire in the corn; he was the light on the spear. He was bright day in the dark land.
They were with him, all of them, not only the few who wrought the circle here. Priests and mages, servants in the temples, initiates on the world’s roads, guardians at the Gates, attendants upon lords and princes—all gathered in the bright blaze that was his power. All knew what he wrought here; all wove themselves within it.
He, their heart and their crown, took the body of the god’s servant. He lifted it up, and it weighed no more than a breath. He filled it with light.
It burned like a lamp made of straw. Like a lamp it was beautiful, and like straw it was consumed.
The shape of it lingered yet a while, a body of light. Then it too crumbled and sank into ash.
The light died. The circle withered and fell away. There was a great stillness.
Estarion looked down upon an empty bed. The impress of the body was in it still. “Great bear of the north,” he said. “Great mage and priest. Dear god in heaven, dread goddess below, how I loved you.”
The god’s departing left him cold and ill and bleakly, grimly content. He did not remember what he said to the priests. He supposed that he had said something; they seemed a little comforted. One, the priestess who looked rather like Ziana, wept in his arms. He left her folded in Shaiyel’s. They would all grieve together, once he had freed them from the vexation of his presence.
o0o
When he noticed again where he was, he was far from them, surrounded by strangers. He blinked, clearing his sight to a frightened face, a voice babbling of something: “My lord, if you will eat, you have not touched a bite since yesterday, you should—”
Lord Shurichan, solicitous to silliness, transparently terrified lest he be found guilty of the empress’ murder. He was guilty of much—Estarion could hardly approve of an agreement or three that he had made in the event of the emperor’s death—but in that he had taken no part.
How simple to see the truth; how blinding the pain that came after it, the power swelling and pulsing, struggling to break free of encumbering flesh.
He was growing stronger, or more skilled. He swayed, but caught himself before anyone could wake to alarm.
There was no mage near to recognize the hesitation for what it was. Only simple men, Asanians, who determined that he was weak with fasting, and herded him to a chamber and saw him plied with dainties until he ate simply to be rid of them.
He drank considerably more than he ate. Korusan would have had something to say of that, but Korusan was nowhere about.
Dizzy with wine and wrath but steady on his feet, Estarion went in search of his guardsman.
He found the boy where he belonged, standing guard over Estarion’s chambers. The sight of him woke something. It might have been rage. It might have been joy—black joy, that cried to Iburan’s bright spirit: See, he is mine. He loves me!
Estarion pulled him within, shut the door on goggling faces, got rid of veils and robes and encumbrances and flung him down on the floor, as if he were the whole empire of Asanion and Estarion an army arrayed against it.
Korusan was not acquiescent. That weakness was not in his nature. But he allowed it. He did not struggle, though he could have fought free and felled Estarion if he had been so minded. He yielded because it was wise to yield, but, great dancer that he was, he yielded as it best pleased him, guiding where he seemed to be guided, leading where he might have been led.
And when they lay breathless, tangled in robes and rugs and one another, Estarion raised his head from Korusan’s sweat-slicked breast. “Only you,” he said, “could give me this.”
“A fight?” asked Korusan.
“I’d have raped a woman,” Estarion said.
“You would not.” Korusan pulled him up and kissed him. “You are royally drunk. Who fed you so much wine? I will have his ballocks for it.”
“You can’t have them,” Estarion said. “I need them. If not—for raping women—”
“You are incapable of any such thing. Now will you stop it before you grow maudlin? Tears are shameful enough. Tears soaked in wine are a disgrace.”
“That too you give me,” said Estarion, “brisk as a slap in the face. What would I be without you?”
“Dead,” said Korusan. He wriggled free, sprang to his feet. But he did not move once he was up, standing half turned away, as if he did not know what to do next.
He had grown since first Estarion saw his face. He was a little taller, his shoulders visibly wider. He was less a boy, more the man that he was meant to be. But beautiful still. That would not change, however old he grew.
Estarion rose behind him, folded arms about him. “There now. I’m not going to die just yet.”
Korusan was rigid. “And if I am? What will you do, my lord?”
“You aren’t, either,” Estarion said through the cold clenching in his middle. Not this one. Not this one, too. “See, you don’t even have a fever. You’re as well as I’ve ever seen you.”
“Ask your priestess how that is. Ask her how much it cost her magic, to make me so.”
Estarion started. “You went to Vanyi?”
He had not seen her with those about Iburan. She should have been there. She would tear herself with grief, that she had not.
“She came to me.” Korusan’s breath caught. It might have been laughter. “Or I fell at her feet. I shall have to kill her, my lord. She saw my face.”
“Kill her,” said Estarion with deadly lightness, “and I kill you.”
“And then, no doubt, yourself.” Korusan sighed. His stiffness eased a little; he leaned back against Estarion. “She would almost be worthy of you, if she had any lineage to speak of.”
“How perfectly Asanian,” Estarion said.
“I am perfect Asanian,” said Korusan.
46
The sun set in a sky as lucent and as brittle as ice. The city was quiet, but it was the quiet of exhaustion. Where the rebellion would flare again, or when, no one knew. Not even Estarion.
He had begun that bleak day beside his mother’s bier. He chose to end it there. In the morning he must sing her death-rite. Then she would go to the embalmers, who would prepare her for the long journey to her tomb.
Tonight she lay in peace. He dismissed the guards, who granted him that right, to keep the last vigil alone.
His tears were all shed. He was as still as she was, and nigh as cold. His flesh felt little enough of it; the Sun’s fire warmed it. But his heart was as hard as her cheek beneath his hand, and as icily chill.
Someone breathed close by. He
whipped about.
Ulyai padded out of the shadows beyond the candles’ light. Her cubs followed in a wary line, and behind them the woman whose name, after all, he did not know, nor anything of what she was. To his newborn mage-sight she was a dark glass, clear to the bottom and yet revealing nothing but a shadow of his own face.
The ul-queen stretched herself at the bier’s foot. Her she-cubs pressed close. The he-cub sought the colder comfort of Estarion’s knee.
So high already. He would be tall, that one.
Sidani walked past Estarion as if he had not been there, round the bier, to bend over the figure that lay on it. Estarion had ceased to be astonished at anything she did, but this verged on impertinence. He opened his mouth to say so.
“She had Asanian blood, you know,” the wanderer said, “and royal at that. Hirel never knew that he had a daughter among the tribes. It mattered little to them; it was carelessness in a chieftain’s daughter, or willfulness, to bear the child of the one they called the little stallion. That’s how you come by your eyes, youngling. She carried the Lion’s blood, too—as much as your father did.”
“When did Hirel ever—”
“On a time,” she said, “when Sarevadin, proud idiot that he was, had slain a mage with power, and lost his own in return. It should have killed him. He found the Zhil’ari instead, and his companion found a diversion to sweeten the evenings. In the end they came to Endros and the Sunborn, and Sarevadin had healing, of a sort, though he hardly knew it then. He’d lost his magery beyond retrieving. He’d gained something that, once known, was more by far.”
Estarion looked at her and knew that she was mad. But it was a seductive madness, of a most persuasive sort. It tempted a man to give himself up to it as if it were true. “Is that a secret, lady? That those who kill with magery become greater than mages?”
“Goddess forbid,” said Sidani. “We’d have a world full of warring mages else, blasting one another to ash in the hope of becoming gods.”
“You make no sense,” Estarion said.
“I make perfect sense,” she said. “You’re a great killer of mages. Has it made you hungry for more?”